From the archive: Mike Levine on Pete Seeger: 'The lion in his winter still roars'

Tuesday

Jan 28, 2014 at 9:45 AMJan 28, 2014 at 9:54 AM

Mike Levine

This column, written by former Times Herald-Record Executive Editor Mike Levine and originally published Nov. 30, 1988, looks at the fight Pete Seeger faced on a daily basis, circa 1988. There were times that appreciation of Seeger's advocacy wasn't in vogue.

He will be 70 years old soon and the mail keeps coming. The phone rings in his Beacon cabin. And rings again.

Join this cause, they say; sing for that one; get thrown into jail for this one, Pete. Find someone else, he tells them. "My voice is half shot.''

Then, one more time, one more favor for a friend or a cause, and Pete Seeger is on the road again, strumming the national guitar of dust bowls and dirty rivers.

His are remarkable seasons of fame and banishment. His causes range from saintly to ghastly, almost all of them unpopular when he first raises their tattered flag.

"Every night, at 9 or 10, I get tired and I say, the hell with it,'' he says. "But the happiest people I know are involved in a struggle.''

He spawned this life in a blue blood's early spring of privilege. Seeger grew up in a spacious house near Pawling, a favored American son whose roots went back to the Mayflower and William Penn. One day, when he was 7, Seeger went to the library and read a book on American Indians. He thought his ancestors gave the Indians a raw deal. He was damn mad about it.

Early on, Seeger went through the motions of convention. Then he dropped out of Harvard, dropped out of everything money can buy and headed south. He fell in love with the banjo and left-wing politics.

When he came back north, he met Woody Guthrie. Linking union struggles and folk music, they got their heads clobbered fighting for causes like the eight-hour workday.

Seeger served in World War II, then came back and lived with Guthrie in Greenwich Village. In 1948, coming up to a Peekskill political rally with Paul Robeson, Seeger was stoned by Klansmen while the cops winked. A rock just missed his baby boy's head.

Soon, Seeger was hit by American lightning. He became a singing star in a wildly popular group called the Weavers. In the early '50s, the Weavers topped the hit parade with standards like "Goodnight Irene.'' Seeger was famous.

But he wouldn't shut up. He remembered once, during the old days of union organizing, Seeger cautioned Guthrie that he was about to play for a left-wing organization. "Left-wing, chicken wing,'' said Guthrie. "It doesn't make any difference to me.''

It made a difference to Americans in the early 1950s. Seeger was summoned several times before Sen. Joseph McCarthy's permanent investigations subcommittee. Unlike others called to testify, Seeger wouldn't apologize for his political beliefs and refused to rat on his friends.

Seeger was blacklisted. He couldn't find work. He continued writing songs generations will sing: "Turn, Turn, Turn,'' "If I Had a Hammer,'' and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?''

With the first buds of the civil rights movement, Seeger went south again. From Selma to Montgomery, he was alongside Martin Luther King. Seeger updated an old spiritual called "We Shall Overcome'' and made it the worldwide anthem of every struggle for equality.

During Vietnam, Seeger protested the war. Beacon High School wouldn't let him speak. His name was reviled from church pulpits. He sang an anti-war song on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.'' CBS canceled the show.

By the '70s, he was back in the establishment's graces with his Sloop Clearwater project to clean up the Hudson River. He was singing with Big Bird, invited on the "Today Show.''

For all his controversy, there's something Jimmy Stewart-simple about his can-do idealism. "This isn't a country that sits back and says nothing can be done,'' he says. "An American gets up off his chair and acts.''

So he does. He's returned from an ill-conceived alliance with Al Sharpton, from a peace march in the windy plains of Iowa, from a recent bout with pneumonia.

Tomorrow night, Pete Seeger is staging a benefit for the homeless at Orange County Community College.

"Let's see if we can't get the gang singing,'' he says.

***

Long before politicians and clergy said a word, Pete Seeger spoke up for the workers' right to a minimum wage, for a person's right to sit in the front seat of a bus. When senators were calling pollution a communist hoax, Seeger helped save the Hudson River from a filthy death.

If people catch up to one of Seeger's causes, they bronze him. When it becomes cool to be callous again, he goes out of fashion. His fellow travelers busy themselves with money and build their little boxes on a hillside. Seeger is put on a shelf, behind the dusty Kingston Trio records.

But the lion in his winter still roars. Pete Seeger will walk on stage tomorrow night and sing for Middletown's homeless. His guitar will ring out the lost chords of American activism.

The concert's organizer was asked how many people were coming to see this national treasure raising money for our national shame.